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At a recent meeting of World Energy Cities Partnership (WECP) of the cities Esbjerg, Stavanger and Aberdeen, CARE-North plus team member Professor Richard Laing was able to present work from the project. He was participating in the event as a guest of Aberdeen City Council, which, in addition to its work on CARE-North plus, is one of the founder members of the WECP.

The practitioners’ meeting included discussion of low carbon initiatives, including sustainable transport, district heating of public housing and the development of alternative fuel sources. It is intended that the meeting outcomes be developed into cross-partnership proposals for collaboration and will be developed further during the full WECP meeting in Houston, Texas USA at the 2014 Offshore Technology Conference.

This conference is part of a series of events initiated and organised by the European CLIMATLANTIC Project. The CLIMATLANTIC Project seeks to develop strategies towards the reduction of the carbon footprint in the Atlantic area at a regional and local level. The project focuses on four essential issues: mobility, energy, territorial management and social behaviour and is developing concrete strategies that are validated through pilot actions. The project is funded by the by the Interreg Atlantic Programme.

The conference was an excellent opportunity to more closely link the activities of two Interreg programmes together and to exchange views on the common topic of CO2 reduction. ICLEI presented its work in terms of climate and mobility, especially referring to all current projects such as CARE-North plus. During various exchange opportunities, the integrated and innovative approach of both projects CLIMATLANTIC and CARE-North plus with regard to future mobility planning was discussed. For example, both of the projects work with future development scenarios. Further information on the CLIMATLANTIC project can be found under: http://www.climatlanticproject.eu/eng/index.php

Many challenges exist for the transport sector – spanning from its dependence on oil, the prevelance of carbon emission, the costs of maintaining large-scale transport infrastructure, congestion on many parts of the network and so on. Job creation is often in the foreground when calling for more (road) transport infrastructure. But is the creation of transportation infrastruture the best approach to job creation? Can the above mentioned problems be dealt with constructively by expanding road transport infrastructure? Should we give up when looking at the impact of transport on climate gas emissions for the sake of job creation?

The EU-funded Interreg North Sea project CARE-North-plus (“Low carbon transport strategies for the North Sea Area”) shared some provocative concepts about alternative approaches to mobility infrastructure, economic stability and job creation at the "Transportation Transformation" event in the European Parliament in Brussels on February 12th, 2014. This dialogue contributed to the stimulation of a political debate about mobility and transport models of the future. The event was held in cooperation with the MEP Michael Cramer, Speaker for the Green Party in the Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN).

Speakers, from left to right: Christian Byrith (Head of the North Sea Region Programme Secretariat), Prof. Jeff Kenworthy (Professor at CUSP in Perth and University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt), Dr. Joachim Lohse (Minister for the Environment, Construction and Transport in Bremen), Michael Glotz-Richter (Senior advisor for sustainable mobility and coordinator of CARE-North plus, City of Bremen), Michael Cramer (MEP, Speaker of the Green Party in the Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN) and Prof. John Whitelegg (Professor of Sustainable Development in the Stockholm Environment Institute in York and Professor of Sustainable Transport in Liverpool).

All for the presentations and pictures of the event can be seen/downloaded from Gallery and below, in the attachments section.

CARE-North plus has been accepted by the Steering Committee as an 18-month extension of the successful CARE-North project!

The project has a running time of 18 months (from September 2013 until February 2015) and the first partnership/kick-off meeting was held in Malmö mid-October 2013.

This event was for CARE-North plus members and Interreg NSR representatives only.

CARE-North plus will continue use this CARE-North website in order to provide an overview on the previous achievements on sustainable, low-carbon transport solutions. In CARE-North plus, we will also build on the experience from the cluster project LOWCAP (see logo/ link on the right).

The new partnership consists of the following members:

Germany:

The City of Bremen

Nehlsen GmbH & Co. KG

ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), Freiburg

Sweden:
The City of Malmö

United Kingdom
METRO - West Yorkshire Integrated Transport Authority

Aberdeen City Council

The Robert Gordon University

The Netherlands:
The Province of Fryslân

Norway:
Hordaland County Council
The City of Bergen

Belgium:

Taxistop

Photo: CARE-North plus partners viewing a the construction site of a new bicycle parking station in Malmö

This year’s „European Sustainable Energy Award" in the category ‘travelling’ goes to Bremen – honouring the activities in the field of Car-Sharing. Dr. Joachim Lohse, Senator for Environment, Urban Development and Transport and Kerstin Homrighausen, Business Director of the Car-Sharing operator cambio Bremen received the award in the ceremony which was opened by Commissioner Günther Oettinger. He emphasized in his opening speech: “Energy efficiency is not a luxury, energy efficiency is a necessity for the future”.